Conventional 4-color CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow and black) color systems used for processing a color model attempt to accommodate a well defined source color input, interpret the source color input in terms of an intermediary color space, such as the L*a*b* color space, and map the color through the color space to a realizable destination color based on characteristics of the printer. An example of this process is shown in FIG. 1. The mapping from the realizable destination color to the L*a*b* color system and then to the source color is called the “forward printer model” because it is based on measured and modeled characteristics of the printer and knowledge of the source profile. The mapping from the requested source color to the destination color requires the opposite mapping, and is therefore called the “inverse printer model,” as shown in FIG. 1.
Many tools and techniques have been matured over an extended period to manage color on a 4-color printing system, such as a CMYK print engine. On the other hand, a printing system that has more than four colors (4+ colors) might be expected to use custom tools to process the 4+ colors. However, these types of tools are expected to be very complex because the level of redundancy and the number of color combinations to be supported by the system increases rapidly as a function of the number of supported colors.